Star Wars: The Old Republic Review

[Pedro The Hutt]

Very limited character choices.

The aesthetics of all the races are pathetically similar.

The two opposing factions have carbon copy classes.

I don't find them limited, personally, so far I haven't bumped into a single copy of any of my characters, it helps that I'm not rolling a white human like 75% of all the other characters I bump into. (And as an RPer, it is especially awkward to be the only alien in all white human crowd)

And I hope you're not one of those people who insist on playable Ithorians or Trandoshans because that's not going to happen. If most people can't even get themselves to roll a Twi'lek then a playable Trandoshan is just going to be a waste of resources.

And I like the fact they use mirror classes, makes balancing the two factions much more manageable. It's the same reason why most team & class based FPS use the same classes and weapons on both sides, they'd have to a lot more balance work for both PvE and (especially) PvP if they had divergent classes.

I guess I have to rely on Guild Wars 2 to save the MMO genre.

I have two major irks with this review. Firstly, the claim that this introduces "role playing" elements that other MMOs lack. Well that defends on how you define "role playing". Star Wars: The Old Republic gives you a story and a biography identical to thousands of others and gives you no control, whereas other MMOs let YOU define your character and give you more freedom (and no, by defining your character, I don't mean giving you a dialogue wheel and a morality bar, I mean letting you decide your character's motivations and your character's history that isn't from a selection of in game prompts.)

Secondly, the criticism of ToR's hotkey and abilities based gameplay because this is "MMO" gameplay. This is incorrect. It is "typical MMO gameplay" because that's how WoW did it and everybody wants to copy WoW, an apparent formula for success". It is possible to create a massively multiplayer game without this style of gameplay, as Guild Wars will hopefully show us.

I will be avoiding this game due to horror stories I've heard and my diminishing respect of Bioware and the Star Wars franchise.

Dare I ask what horror stories you've heard? Because I'm having a whale of a time in TOR myself.
And while I'm really looking forward to Guild Wars 2, at the end of the day different players will still need to fulfil different roles in order to succeed at a certain objective, so while the dedicated healer is gone, there'll still be those who do damage, those who prevent and/or absorb damage, and those who CC up a storm. And while preventing damage is supposed to be a shared responsibility in GW2, question is if the community will follow suit on that. And at the end of the day, you're still using hotkeys and abilities, key differences being however that you need to make a build of ten skills and make those work until you get back to town. There are some things you simply can't avoid in an MMO, Arena.net is trying bravely to change things up, but I doubt they'll change everything. And not that they have to, at the end of the day, if GW2 is a fun game I'll gladly play it. TOR might not be a huge revolution (but certainly an evolution) in MMO land, but I'm having fun, and that's good enough for me.

 

[Imbechile]

After they retconned KOTOR2(one of the few generaly interesting stories to come out of the shitty star wars universe) I've gave up on star wars

 

[VulakAerr]

Great review. I don't think there's any other game in recent months that has so warranted the phrase: Haters gonna hate.

There is such a feeling outside the game of people wanting to hate this, because of Bioware, EA, Dragon Age 2, loyalty to WoW that it feels utterly ridiculous to even try to present an objective review. Oddly, inside the game, everyone is having a whale of a time, save for those unfortunate few with the framerate issues.

To those who are saying the "story" argument is overblown: it's not. I've played many MMOs and put significant effort into many of them. This is the only one where you feel like your character is a part of an actual narrative. The closest I've seen another MMO get is probably a tie between LotRO and GW1 but neither of them actually gave the option of connecting with your own character. Even moreso when you are grouped with others. You can try to argue this, you can give examples of other MMOs with a narrative, but you'd be wrong. This IS moving things forward and is the best example of a story-driven MMO you're likely to see in a good while.

P.S. Acrisius: You're right. The IA storyline is possibly the strongest in the game. It has less of a slow start than the others, although many of the others are better than the Prologue would have you believe. Jedi Knight story is particularly strong.

 

[bjj hero]

It sounds great but I cannot bring myself to pay a subscription for any game. I guess Ill continue to read about it.

 

[Frankster]

Night of good sleep makes a happy frank <3 Righties, where were we...

Spoiler

I will tell you that Revan story plays differently for Empire and Republic, and as far as we are aware, neither got the Canon seal of approval, and probably neither won't, atleast on this subject.

Spoiler

Whilst its possible they will pull the "he didn't really die and just teleported away" trick which would be all kinds of lame as he did have some genuinely awesome last words "and so in the end i am nothing as I go back to the darkness, now I know how you felt old friend....", as far as I know the flashpoints story are "cannon" in that republic frees revan in their flashpoint, he then goes to meet the jedi council and something and then leaves for the foundry which is where the empire "slays" him. Or at least this is what word on my server was, not like i have official bioware approval for that, but makes sense.

wait wait wait, you're criticizing the spaceship fighting segments for not being engaging for the player? that's like saying the awesome tie fighter fight in episode 4 ("that's great kid, don't get cocky!" that one) was distracting/confused the audience and didn't move the plot along.

i'm glad to hear nice things about the rest of the game, makes me more inclined to get it, but i think the idea of getting to do rail shooter fighter segments is pretty cool, it'd be just like in the original movies.

What really confuses me about the space missions hate is that it's 100% optional and you are never directed or even asked to do a single mission. Its like a minigame you do to take a break from main mission or an easy way to get that last bunch of xp to level.
But not doing it doesn't penalize you in any way and it's easily possible to not even realize you can do the space missions.

So yeh, saying this is TOR's greatest fault is like saying FF7's greatest fault was its minigames in the golden saucer (best analogy i could come up with at this time xP).

P.S. Acrisius: You're right. The IA storyline is possibly the strongest in the game. It has less of a slow start than the others, although many of the others are better than the Prologue would have you believe. Jedi Knight story is particularly strong.

Peh i was proclaiming the agent had the best story worth the price of admission way before him! >:O Agent story is nothing but pure awesomness, being consistenly good at all times with crechendos of pure awesomness. The IA story could have ended at act 1 and i'd have been happy, but now, it just keeps on giving and finding new ways of being awesome. Whichever bioware writer wrote it, I owe him/her a drink.

 

[Nyanya]

Others have had their say on this, but I feel the need to add my own two cents as well.

It's quite a decent review. But I can't help but think that Mr. Butts' definition of "real roleplaying" is very different from mine. To me TOR's conversation system isn't roleplaying, it's choosing a path through a narrative. "Choose Your Own Adventure" if you will. You're not the one roleplaying, the animators and voice actors are roleplaying 'your' character. Oftentimes the choices you make can have surprising results as far as what your character actually does and says and that should never be the case in roleplaying. It seems to me that the cinematic conversations are no more roleplaying than sitting in the audience for improv theater is acting.

Don't get me wrong. I do honestly believe that The Old Republic is the best MMO I've ever played. I've never enjoyed an MMO as much as I do TOR (that's not to say that I haven't enjoyed myself more in other MMOs, but that was despite the game in question and not because of it). But roleplaying it is not. In fact I agree with others here that it seems to make roleplaying more difficult due to its restrictive (if enjoyable) stories.

But then I've disagreed for many years with BioWare on what roleplaying is. To them it seems to be "the developers tell a story and let you make a few choices in it to give the illusion that you're part of it" where for me a vital part of roleplaying is that the players are the ones telling the story.

 

[A.I. Sigma]

It's a shame I stand firm in my decision to boycott EA's games (along with UbiSoft and Activision/Blizzard)

Why?

--

In other news, I would love to play the game, but the fact it glitches on launch and leaves me with a black screen while the game sounds continue hinders that somewhat. Common problem that still needs to be fixed. Thanks, Bioware. Truly.

 

[ASnogarD]

I want the SWTOR the reviewer played , as the one I am playing is not as described...

The SWTOR I got is a bland and boring MMO with pretty SW trappings draped over its sparse skeletal body, where the majority of the huge funding went into paying the voice actors and the launch party because quiet frankly the rest of the game is dull... expect the sounds, they are awesome.

Combat is about the same as a typical WoW clone expect everyone is a pet using class, and most classes cant even fight mobs without thier pet being around to tank the aggro. What makes the SWTOR combat a bit more exciting is the sound effects, other than that it is typical

Graphics are basic, good but didnt really try hard to impress. Textures are low quality and during cutscenes the characters and textures really stand out as poor. Graphics may not make a game but WoW has better looking graphics without all the instancing SWTOR uses and is a dinosaur in terms of computer age.

The story mechanic is pretty good but the choices of light and dark are stupid, sorry but it boils down to simply do you want to get gear that requires Light III or Dark IV... there is no meaningfull choice. The other choices are I am a goodie two shoes and accept the task or I am a greedy sob and accept the task, or refuse task... thats basically it for choices.
The actual questing is a yawnfest for the most part, usually involves running looooooong distances on a narrow road that is walled in to prevent taking intresting shortcuts, a short spell of fighting mobs for drops ( drop rate is very high ) and then a loooooong run back to hand in the quest... there is a very good reason the autorun toggle is bound to mouse4, you will be running a LOT.

I actually enjoyed the Space Combat portions, it serves as a nice change from the linear grind of the main game as PvP is a joke early levels ( dont bother until at least 30 ), the Space Combat is a simplistic rail shooter with limited mechanics but is quiet a fun little mini game.

Summary: SWTOR is a bland , boring MMO that is propped up by pretty SW trappings and a Bioware style story mechanic. I would score it 3 out of 5 at most and reccommend for SW fans only, MMO fans looking for the next best MMO would be advised not to bother or at least wait for free trials.

 

[shadowmagus]

Alright, I'm a big roleplayer in the traditional sense so this only really applies to me and those like me. I'm glad you enjoyed the game as it is, but I have many gripes with the "roleplaying" aspect you praise very highly.

First off, the roleplaying aspect is hindered by the fact that your character's "biography" and decisions are going to probably be the exact same as thousands of people, and very similar to many, many more.

The entire point of roleplaying in an MMO is the roleplay that occurs between players. You are clearly a single player RPG fan, which is why you said it caters to you, and that is perfectly fine!

For you.

For us, those who roleplay in multiplayer environments, it's actually more restricting and makes it even more difficult to roleplay, rather than aiding it.

Very limited character choices.

The aesthetics of all the races are pathetically similar.

The two opposing factions have carbon copy classes.

All of these things make this game much more difficult to roleplay on than on something like World of Warcraft.

The absolute, biggest flaw in roleplaying in multiplayer games are quests, NPCs and events that are shared with the entire game world. Every player is the hero. Every player is the villain. Every player is the "chosen one". This is severely limiting to those who truly roleplay!


What Bioware did was make a single player RPG, with multiplayer option. But is it really surprising? That's what Bioware does, and to expect anything different would be surprising. All in all, there is no denying the quality of content here and Bioware continues to prove they are one of the best single player RPG power houses in the world.


But a Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game? Very, very lacking.


Just my two cents. Great review, by the way!

As someone running an RP guild in this game, I have to say you have no idea what you are talking about. RP is extremely vibrant in this game and most people are doing exactly what they have done in previous games. Ignoring the story. The story makes it great for leveling. It is nice to see how something you do resolves an issue, but no one in the RP community that I have run into is following the story as it has been laid out.

Everyone knows there is a story. Good for it, it provides a distraction from leveling. That said, no one I know of is basing their RP character word-for-word based on the game story. Sure we might use general tidbits, but short of that, it seems business as usual.

 

[Palmerama]

I'm still on the fence. After what Drew Karpyshyn managed to do to Revan, I don't know if I want to mix Bioware with Star Wars anymore.

So...the book is a no-go then?

---

I'm passing on this one. My PC barely manages flash games at this point and I've never been a fan of the MMO. I think I can also say I'm passing this by to boycott EA and Origin but that would be a lie since I don't really care about either...well, Origin anyway.

Avoid that book at all cost. which also means you should rightfully pass on the MMO as well.

That's a terrible reason to pass on this game! Yeah he wrote one bad book so what!? He also created Revan as he was one of the lead writers for KOTOR, and he's a lead writer for TOR aswell. Don't forget he's also the lead writer for Mass Effect (and has written 3 brillaint spin off novels), not to mention his other writing credits inlcude the Baldur's Gate series, Jade Empire, and Neverwinter Nights.

I'm having a blast playing this game. And its not that surprising that there isn't much to do after the end game. They had to stop at some point otherwise the game would never have come out. It's only been a month. Anyway there are plenty of other classes you could try! You couldn't have got all of them to lvl 50 in a month!

 

[Woodsey]

This feeling is massively reinforced when I arrive at a quest hub and see half a dozen other players wandering around with 'my' companion by their side.

How far have you gotten? That rapidly dispels.

First two worlds, and before anyone calls me out on jumping to premature conclusions, in every MMO I've ever played and loved the first 20 levels were where I started to love the game. If TOR gets better later on it takes an awfully long time to do so.

Is that your origin planet and capital planet, or the two worlds after that?

Really, it was somewhat noticeable on the capital planet, but as soon as you change their gear, people get multiple companions, and multiple classes are running around, I can't say I've noticed at all.

In fact, the last time I noticed someone had the same companion was because they'd given him a ludicrous white cape to wear, and they were standing about 2m from me.

I am tempted. So very, very tempted.

I like Bioware. I like the idea of a MMO that is, well... less MMO.

However, I do not like Star Wars (every time someone says "may the force be with you" my eyes want to roll clean out of their sockets) and I'm still not down with the whole subscription thing.

Well, there are 4 non-force user classes to choose from.

This looked neat, I admired the fact they really tried to make the story stand out more then even the combat or choices you can make with your character's style. However, I noticed that their "options" menu for which sentence you want to choose in conversations look very similar to Mass Effects (unless it was suppose to be that way then I understand.)

Also, the space battle.. it seemed to much of a 'rail ride' where you just move a bit, shoot, but don't get to fully control your ship in space. And Star Wars is pretty much focused on space battles when they're not focusing on the characters or battles on land. Still, looks like a cool game. I might have to try it.

Its pretty much the same as Mass Effect's, and personally, I hate space combat. Its there if you want it to be, and they've said they've got bigger plans for it, but at the minute its a distraction for the people who really like that sort of thing.

I'd like to see a Freelancer-level of space flight/combat in the distant future.

 

[Crazy Zaul]

As awesome as it has been playing this game A LOT for the last month and being a fanboy of it, I've already started getting bored of it. The combat still gets just as stale and repetitive as any other MMO. The class stories are good but they are only 3 quests per planet and on most planets the side quests stories are just not good enough to hide the fact that they are kill 10 rats or fetch quests.
Its stupid that Bioware are mostly fixing all the smallest, insignificant, easy to fix bugs first or making new content that probably no one is even geared enough to do yet and not fixing any Actual problems. And they need to change the AH and make crafting actually worth doing.

But at least they are supposedly working on an LFG system, although they are probably blagging.

Anyway i'm just playing it less now and finishing my 2nd playthrough of DAO followed by 1st of DA2, so Bioware wins either way.

 

[Salvatore Notarmaso]

going against the grain, but Bioware missed an opportunity to make a great game here =(

 

[Nemu]

One of the things that I LOVE about this game is how my interaction with my companions immerses me more in the game in various ways. For example, my Sith Assassin's first companions, Khem, is this (in my view) defeated-yet-noble warrior, bloodthirsty and begrudgingly loyal to who he serves. In the case of my guild, most of the folks who play an Inquisitor do not like him, but I -LOVE- this guy because he is nearly a mirror of how i am choosing to play my own SI--as bloodthirsty, begrudgingly loyal and noble in her own mind.

I'm not a role player per-say, but because of my companions' different personalities, I find myself more engaged that I would have otherwise been in the game (and knowing how Khem was from Beta is why a SI was my first roll when the game went gold).

So many folks are downplaying how fun this game is, likely due to it not delivering on the hype (to them). Others are calling it a failure and amusingly comparing it to WoW when it comes to potential subscribers after a few months/a year. I always laugh at those comparisons, because I remember how WoW was when it launched, and how quickly folks were to dismiss it and trash it.

I don't think that ToR is necessarily revolutionary, but I think it's fun as hell and a lot diverse in it's gameplay than folks are saying. Once the end-game (and pvp) gets a little more settled (and/or fixed), the game could have legs for a long time.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

It isn't so much dissent for me as confusion and an overinflated sense of being around the same douchebags I play WoW with.
The confusion is just this, "Am I really playing an MMO? Oh, yeah... I am... another Chuck Norris joke in general, or a troll meme scrolling past my character breaking immersion". Of course you can say "But play with friends and its better". That'd be great except all my friends already play WoW and aren't interested in switching subscriptions when they're already endgame.

Edit: Oh and neither am I. I liked the beta, but not enough to buy it.

 

[Steve Butts]

It's quite a decent review. But I can't help but think that Mr. Butts' definition of "real roleplaying" is very different from mine. To me TOR's conversation system isn't roleplaying, it's choosing a path through a narrative. "Choose Your Own Adventure" if you will. You're not the one roleplaying, the animators and voice actors are roleplaying 'your' character. Oftentimes the choices you make can have surprising results as far as what your character actually does and says and that should never be the case in roleplaying. It seems to me that the cinematic conversations are no more roleplaying than sitting in the audience for improv theater is acting.

We definitely disagree on that but, just to indulge the point, what game would satisfy your definition of roleplaying? I've yet to see an RPG on any platform where you're in charge of all of the character's animations and voice. Is there a game where you provide the voice for your character during NPC interactions? I'm sorry, but I absolutely don't get the point of your objection, which seems to suggest Baldur's Gate isn't really an RPG either.

For me, the essence of true roleplaying is being given a choice within the context of a story and then seeing the results of that choice play out in front of you. TOR does that very well, at least within the confines of the MMO genre.

 

[mega48man]

Night of good sleep makes a happy frank <3 Righties, where were we...

posts mother fucker, can you snip them!?!?

wait wait wait, you're criticizing the spaceship fighting segments for not being engaging for the player? that's like saying the awesome tie fighter fight in episode 4 ("that's great kid, don't get cocky!" that one) was distracting/confused the audience and didn't move the plot along.

i'm glad to hear nice things about the rest of the game, makes me more inclined to get it, but i think the idea of getting to do rail shooter fighter segments is pretty cool, it'd be just like in the original movies.

What really confuses me about the space missions hate is that it's 100% optional and you are never directed or even asked to do a single mission. Its like a minigame you do to take a break from main mission or an easy way to get that last bunch of xp to level.
But not doing it doesn't penalize you in any way and it's easily possible to not even realize you can do the space missions.

So yeh, saying this is TOR's greatest fault is like saying FF7's greatest fault was its minigames in the golden saucer (best analogy i could come up with at this time xP).

they're like minigames AND they're optional? SWEET! but then i looked at the full price of 60$ and i said to myself "fuck that, i'll wait until george lucas, or someone who's in charge, reads that article on this site about MMORPG's being forced to become F2P or die in competition with WoW"

 

[wooty]

I played a fair amount of time at a friends house and also watched him play it so I could get the gist of it, but............I dont know, it felt unfulfilling. Just felt like WoW with lasers to me, Mass Effect was far more engaging for me despite it being "resticted" to single player pieces.

I guess I'll just have to follow the standard MMO progression tactic, give it a year and them go back to reading more about it. Did it with Star Trek online and apparantly its gotten really good now. Plus its F2P, so thats a +1 in its favour.

That and Guild Wars 2 is round the corner, SWTOR may have to go to the back of the metaphorical bus.

 

[demotion1]

It is roleplaying. You shape your character as you like and he feels your own. Yes everybody else is playing the same storyline, so what? What matters is how it feels.

I do respect everyone's opinion, and if somebody has played a lot of the game and does not like it it is their right and they have every right to tell their issues. I do have a question though: How can people who have not played the game claim that it sucks? How can you bash a game and not know basic terms about it like Operations? (that is how raids are called here).

 

[Slycne]

snip

I can second this. I'm loving the Imperial Agent's story. There was at least one moment of crippling indecision where I had to struggle with a choice not only for its own sake but to also consider what I would choose and what the agent I had been playing thus far would have.